I've been online since 1994. My mom had a new computer with all the bells and whistles at the time. I think it was a Compaq 386 and she had AOL and Windows 3.1.

I was between jobs so I just hung out all day and learned the computer as much as I could. I had some experience from taking a computer drafting class in 1992. When I was in tech school in '88, computers were just starting to be used for drafting, but it hadn't taken off yet. I missed the boat because I didn't take the classes back then. Dammit.

Anyway, I spent time online in the Philosophy chat room on AOL. A lot of stuff I was saying back then seemed "out there" or controversial, but today some of these ideas are widely accepted and common place ideas. No kidding...it takes awhile for everyone else to catch up.

Funny thing is, at my job today, I use a modern computer to do my drafting, but all the field work is still ran through a DOS program on a 486 computer running a dot matrix printer. I think the program is from 1992 and still works great. It's actually kinda cool now working in that retro environment.